Tag Archives: schools

Milestone: more than 100 virtual volunteering research articles

1 Reply

As of October 2020, a milestone has been reached regarding virtual volunteering: I’ve found more than 100 research articles, dating back to 1997 and most with a university association, related to virtual volunteering. These are all listed here at the Virtual Volunteering Wiki.

I started tracking published research regarding virtual volunteering – using the internet to engage and support volunteers – when I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I began heading the project in December 1996 and within several months of looking, I not only had found about 100 programs, most at nonprofits, a few at schools, that were involving online volunteers, I also realized that the practice was at least a couple of decades old, first starting at the Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort that began in 1971 to digitize, archive and distribute the full texts of public domain books, such as works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. But what I had trouble finding was academic research on the subject. I had found a fair amount by the time The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook was published, but even so, it seemed still to be rather on the lean side for a practice that was so well-established.

I had no funding to research and write The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and I’ve had no funding to continue maintaining the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which tracks news and research regarding using the Internet to engage and support volunteers. But, indeed, I’ve maintained the wiki all these years, focusing on things that I deemed newsworthy and, especially, academic research. When I realized that there are now more than 100 research articles, dating back to 1997 and most with a university association, related to virtual volunteering, I felt it was worth celebrating. And this is just the English-language material: I bet there is a fair amount in Spanish, given Spain’s leadership in virtual volunteering for a couple of decades now.

Note that sometimes research articles do not call the unpaid contributors or unpaid virtual team members “volunteers.” For instance, any research paper on Wikipedia contributors could be considered research on virtual volunteering, as Wikipedia contributors – Wikipedians – are unpaid by Wikimedia for those contributions.

Also note that many of the papers make the mistake of talking about virtual volunteering as new, ignoring or overlooking its more than three-decade history. When I read that this is a “new” practice in an academic paper recently published, especially a thesis or dissertation, it makes it very hard for me to take the rest of the research seriously. I wish more university professors would catch that inaccurate point of view early on in a PhD student’s exploration of the subject.

It’s so wonderful to see that virtual volunteering now has a rich research history to go along with its rich history of practice, and I love reading perspectives about virtual volunteering by people who ARE NOT ME. Look, it’s been fun to be the world’s expert regarding virtual volunteering, but I’m so hungry to read perspectives by other people, particularly regarding what works best in supporting online volunteers, particularly different demographics of such volunteers – is it different to involve teen online volunteers in India versus tech-savy senior volunteers in Germany? Is there something that works well supporting online volunteers in South Africa that is different than what’s done in Spain? Is engaging and supporting rural online volunteers different from engaging and supporting urban or suburban online volunteers, even in the same country? I’d love to see such comparative studies!

What’s not needed? Research on the motivations of people who volunteer online. Good grief, people, ENOUGH!

I would also love beyond words if a university would step forward and be willing to take over management of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. Having university students and faculty maintaining this would make it a much more rich and valuable resource. Any takers?

Let me be frank: I’m going to eventually retire. I’ll always be interested in virtual volunteering, and I’ll be an online volunteer myself for, I hope, decades to come (in between my extensive motorcycle riding). But just as there is no one Queen or King of All Things Volunteer Management, there shouldn’t be just one person, or always the same person, keeping track of news and research regarding virtual volunteering and distilling the key points of such. It’s overdue for new leaders, and a diversity of new leaders, to emerge in this field. I stand ready to support those new leaders (or, at least, figuratively – I can’t stand as long as I used to).

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Arts education is ESSENTIAL, not a nice extra

Leave a reply

Amy Cuddy and CBS This Morning are in love with “power poses.” The “news” story they did recently was all about how standing or sitting a certain way, even if no one is looking at you, can help you feel more confident and powerful, and when done in front of other people, allow them to see you as such. Certainly body language is very important in presentation, for both the presenter and those you want to listen, but I was cringing over some of the recommendations, like for the pose where you sit in your chair and put your feet up on your desk as you talk to others – which, as anyone who works internationally knows, is profoundly disrespectful to people in a room with you. And the reporter’s fawning over a photo of Cuddy’s husband, in a pose they loved but that, to me, was demanding and demeaning to the viewer in a way that made me want to leave the room and get as far away from him as possible.

But what really ticked me off was this exchange:

“We don’t learn this stuff in school,” the interviewer, Rita Braver, said.

“No, we don’t teach it,” replied Cuddy.

Um… I learned it in school. I learned it in choir. You know, one of those arts classes that a lot of people that want to “revolutionize” and “disrupt” schools think are unnecessary in schools and should be replaced with more practical classes? If you were in any of the choirs in the Henderson County, Kentucky school system, you learned very quickly how to sit and how to stand, even when you weren’t singing. Certain postures were required, and other postures absolutely banned in the classroom. And those posture requirements have stayed with me to this day, decades later; I don’t sing in a choir anymore, but I know how to sit or stand in a meeting to indicate I am listening, that I hear you, and how to sit or stand so that you will feel compelled to listen to me. Performing in school plays also helped me with posture, with saying something by the way I was standing or sitting: fear, disinterest, confidence, surprise, and on and on.

But posture and presentation skills aren’t the only things that choir and drama activities in school gave me and that continue to serve me: I also know how to work in a team and meet a deadline, and how to dream, how to imagine, how to think creatively. There is a creative process, one that gets kick-started and flourishes when you go to art galleries, watch movies, read novels, and if possible, participate in making art yourself – singing, dancing, drawing, performing. You stare at clouds or a field or trees instead of a lit screen, and you let your mind wander, so that you can actually get ideas, so that you can formulate your own ideas. A lot of times ideas will turn up when you’re doing something else. Creativity is vital for most successful entrepreneurs or people brought in to improve a project, a program or an entire business. You don’t just disrupt a project or program or entire organization just because you can – you look for new ways of doing things that are needed by those served, an innovation that increases efficiency, that better addresses needs and challenges, and that keeps staff inspired – not just a change for change’s sake – and those disruptions come from inspiration, from creativity.

Neil de Grass Tyson, David Byrne, talked recently in an interview on Star Talk about the VITAL importance of arts education to innovators in any field – business, engineering, scientific research, whatever. I cried over this 3:44 minute part of the show, where an astrophysicist talks about why arts is VITAL to creativity. I could not agree more.

Instead of taking arts-related classes and learning to imagine, some Silicon Valley tech workers are taking LSD to be more creative. That’s so sad. Start a company choir. Dance. Try out for community theater. Have a reading of a Shakespeare play at your house. And sit up straight!

Also see:

That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket

Why Top Tech CEOs Want Employees With Liberal Arts Degrees

Comparing schools with high & low volunteer engagement

Leave a reply

The local edition of The Oregonian recently published an article comparing local schools here in Forest Grove with high volunteer involvement to those with little or no volunteer involvement. The article focused on parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) and their ability to fundraise to support school trips, teacher support (buying materials), playgrounds, etc. The local schools here in Washington County with high volunteer involvement are flourishing; the schools without such are struggling.

I loved the article because it really drives home just how vital volunteer engagement is, not to just get work done, but to create community investment in an organization.

I feel really bad for the schools without high parental involvement – and when you look at the makeup of the schools, it’s pretty obvious as to why the schools don’t have a PTO at all, or the one it has is barely surviving, at least in my opinion:

  • the parents in the schools with little or no volunteer involvement lack the education levels and work experience of those in the high-performing schools (it’s hard to lead a fundraising effort if you have no project management experience or no public-speaking experience),
  • the parents in the schools with little or not volunteer involvement often don’t speak English or don’t feel confident about their English skills (and often don’t feel confident about public speaking),
  • there’s no tradition among the parents in the school with low volunteer involvement of volunteer involvement in the schools (it’s a very new idea for many),
  • the parents in the schools with little or no volunteer involvement don’t have the child care resources that parents in other schools have,
  • those charged with volunteer involvement in the school, or should be charged with such, don’t understand the basics of volunteer engagement.

Volunteers aren’t free. There are ALWAYS costs associated with involving volunteers. And sometimes, an organization – a nonprofit, a school, or otherwise – needs much more than someone saying, “We need volunteers.” But will corporations and governments step up to the plate and fund the staff and resources necessary to increase parental involvement in struggling schools?

A side note: the article quotes a representative from PTO Today, a company that specializes in volunteer engagement resources for schools, and it’s worth noting that the site has free resources in Spanish to reach out to Spanish speaking parents, like lists of reasons to get involved in school, lists of reasons to join the school parent group, a sample volunteer thank you letter, and more.

Also see, from me:

Volunteers: still not free

Leave a reply

graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersWikipedia is free – for users. Its more than 12 million articles can be accessed free of charge. It’s maintained by more than 100,000 online volunteers – unpaid people – who create articles and translate them into over 265 languages. That makes Wikipedia/Wikimedia the world’s largest online volunteering endeavor.

Unlike most organizations that involve volunteers, Wikipedia doesn’t screen the majority of its volunteers: anyone can go in to the web site an edit just about any article, any time he or she wants to. You want to volunteer for Wikipedia, you just start editing or writing any article. That makes the majority of its volunteer engagement microvolunteering, the hot term for short-term episodic online volunteering.

But, wait — maybe Wikipedia is not free…

This is from a blog post in 2012 regarding its latest fundraising campaign:

The Wikimedia Foundation’s total 2011-12 planned spending is 28.3 million USD.

Funds raised in this campaign will be used to buy and install servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers.

That emphasis is mine – some of those millions of dollars are needed to support Wikimedia’s involvement of volunteers. Because volunteers are not free. It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort and expertise to wrangle more than 100,000 online volunteers and all that they do on behalf of Wikipedia/Wikimedia. And that takes money.

But it’s not just Wikipedia: any nonprofit organization, non-governmental organization (NGO), school, government initiative or community initiaitive that wants to involve volunteers has to:

  • Provide at least one staff member – an employee or a volunteer – to supervise and support volunteer work, to ensure volunteers don’t do any harm to the organization, its clients or other volunteers/staff, and to ensure everyone working with volunteers has the support they need to do so appropriately and successfully. That person has to know how to do that part of his or her job, even if it’s just 25% of his or her job, and that might require the organization to send the person to workshops or classes, to subscribe to e-volunteerism (the leading online resource in the USA regarding volunteer engagement), to read books about volunteer screening, supervising volunteers, child safety… and that takes FUNDING.
  • Everyone that works with volunteers must make sure the work volunteers undertake is of the quality and type the organization’s clients deserve. That might require sending multiple staff members to workshops or classes, to read books about volunteer screening, supervising volunteers, child safety… again, that takes FUNDING.
  • Staff has to develop activities for volunteers to do — activities that often would be probably be cheaper and done more quickly by staff themselves. Those activities must be in writing, to ensure everyone’s expectations are the same. And, newsflash: the majority of people charged with this task do NOT know how to do it! They need support and guidance in creating volunteering assignments. Who is going to do provide that support and guidance?
  • The organization has to monitor volunteers, record their progress and report it to the board and donors, as well as to the volunteers themselves and, perhaps, the public. That takes time and expertise.

Any organization that does not allocate time and resources to these volunteer management tasks ends up with:

  • people applying or calling to volunteer and never getting a response
  • people coming to volunteer and standing around for the majority of the time, wondering what to do
  • volunteers that don’t complete assignments – which means the organizations has to either recruit more volunteers and start again, or give the work to employees
  • volunteers that don’t complete assignments correctly
  • volunteers that blog and tweet about their negative experience with your organization and, perhaps, about volunteering in general!
  • staff that does not want to involve volunteers

Volunteers are not free. I’ve said it many times before, before, and before that and… well, you get the idea.

I’ll keep saying it until I stop hearing people say, “Volunteers are great because they’re free!”

I’ll keep saying it until campaigns to encourage people to volunteer also include resources to help nonprofit organizations, NGOs, schools, communities and others involve and support more volunteers.

And don’t even try to say volunteers save money, because that starts yet another blog rant…

Recruiting Computer/Network Consultants (paid or volunteer/pro bono)

Leave a reply

There are two reasons mission-based organizations (nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, and public sector agencies) need to recruit computer/network consultants, paid or volunteer/pro bono:

  • Staff at mission-based organizations such as nonprofits, NGOs, schools and government offices have a great deal of expertise in a variety of areas – but, often, such staff do not have expertise in computer hardware, software, and technology-related networks. That means that staff at such organizations often have to rely on consultants, either paid or volunteer, for such expertise.
  • An organization needs to recruit paid or volunteer / pro bono consultants to participate in its program delivery to clients or the public: an organization that helps nonprofits build accessible web sites, for instance, or a community center that helps the low income community it serves regarding computer literacy may want these consultants, paid or volunteer, to design and lead classes.

Staff at mission-based organizations such as nonprofits, NGOs, schools and government offices have a great deal of expertise in a variety of areas, such as health care, child welfare, environmental management, community outreach, human resources management, microfinance, emergency logistics, and on and on. But staff can feel a sense of both awe and fear about tech consultants — that whatever the consultant says goes. Staff may feel unable to understand, question or challenge whatever that consultant recommends.

What can mission-based organizations do to recruit the “right” consultant, whether paid or volunteer, for “tech” related issues, one that will not make them feel out-of-the-loop or out-of-control when it comes to tech-related discussions or the delivery of tech-related services?

See this updated version of Recruiting Computer/Network Consultants (paid or volunteer/pro bono)